I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT: THE 1979 DIARIES OF SEAN DELEAR by Sean DeLear
£15.99
I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT: THE 1979 DIARIES OF SEAN DELEAR by Sean DeLear
£15.99
Title I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Diaries of Sean DeLear
Author(s)/Editor(s) Sean DeLear, edited by Michael Bullock, Cesar Padilla
Publisher Semiotext(e)
Pages 184
Dimensions 135 x 204 mm
Format Softcover
Year 2023

Introduction by Brontez Purnell

When Sean DeLear died prematurely in Vienna in 2017, his friends discovered—among other treasures—an extensive diary kept at the age of fourteen. Still living with his Christian parents in the notoriously racist Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley, Sean wrote almost every day about crushes and hustling, waterbeds, blackmail, Donna Summer, gloryholes, racism, and shoplifting gay porn.

DeLear would go on to become the frontman for the Los Angeles power pop–punk band Glue. He was a musician, visual artist, intercontinental scenester, video vixen, party host, marijuana farmer, and sometime-collaborator of artists such as Kembra Pfahler and Vaginal Davis.

DeLear's forgotten diaries capture a moment in Los Angeles underground and queer history when, as his friend the writer Cesar Padilla notes, “It wasn't cool at all to be trans, gay, queer or whatever. Those words weren't even in the vocabulary.” I Could Not Believe It, Padilla continues, “is a raw fearless innocent gay Black kid's journey coming out into life at an incredible pre-AIDS period. It's not cognizant of being literature. It's as naïve and forthcoming as it gets. It wasn't written with the desire to be published so Sean didn't hold back. Sean's goal was to be true to himself.”

Found in: Semiotext(e)